Saving the Labyrinth
by Kirazi
Summary: Sarah defeated the labyrinth, but now it is falling apart and she is the only one who can save it.
1. Chapter 1

Please be gentle! I haven't written anything in many, many years. I hope you enjoy, and please comment!

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She was celebrating. He watched silently as she embraced the creatures that had become her friends, even the ones that had so recently been her enemies. He alone remained apart, clutching the tree branch below him tightly from his perch outside her window. He had barely allowed himself a brief hope of such an embrace, but that dream had shattered as surely as his final offer. The owl shook itself with a shudder; he could feel the distant tug of his land, though it had changed. _He_ had changed. He dared not stay away much longer. He didn't know what condition the labyrinth would be in when he returned. He still had a duty. After one final glance, he turned and flew into the night on silent wings.

Sarah awoke feeling like she had been electrocuted. Her head was still heavy with sleep, but that didn't stop a strange tingling sensation from crawling across her skin. She sat up and groaned. Apparently, besting the immortal lord of a magical realm was more exhausting than she expected. It was almost like waking up from an insanely vivid dream, except that dreams faded and there was no way she could forget any of what happened the night before. The labyrinth, her friends, even him - she could no more forget them than she could forget Toby.

She sat bolt upright. "Toby!"

She leapt from her bed and raced down the hall to check on her brother, who was still fast asleep in his crib.

"Thank goodness you're alright." She heaved a sigh of relief and reached to touch his cheek. When her fingers touched his skin, she had a sudden impression of being surrounded by noisy goblins while a familiar voice sang nearby. She drew her hand back with a gasp and the vision vanished. "What on earth was that? I must still be half asleep.." Deciding it was simply a trick of her mind, she left Toby to sleep and went to take a shower to help her feel normal again.

Twenty minutes later, Sarah was awake, but something was still off. Despite the previous night's events, she had expected to wake up feeling like it was just another day. Her otherworldly journey should have just faded into the background, shouldn't it? She had certainly learned some things, but now she was back in her own world. Her own boring, mundane, safe world. And yet, things were not as normal as they seemed. She'd been confused to find that her shampoo had left a subtle fruit scent on her hair. _Peach_ , she thought, _of course it would be peach._ When she'd gotten dressed, she kept finding bits of glitter clinging to her clothes. And there was that.. whatever it was.. when she touched Toby's face. She hadn't been able to shake that strange tingling sensation either.

"It figures I would start seeing things after a night like that.. and...smelling them..?" Sarah shook her head and sighed. She hadn't wanted to leave that magical place, of course. It was more than she could have dreamed to ever experience; what else could compare to meeting her wonderful, weird friends, being bitten by mean little fairies, being chased by goblins, and those eyes.. _Stop it, Sarah._ She chided herself. _You chose to save Toby. It was the only thing you could do. You won't see_ him _again._

"..Sarah.."

She almost yelped with surprise. Now _that_ wasn't in her imagination. Was it? It had to have been! She glanced frantically around her room but could come up with no source for the faint, soft voice. "Yep, I'm definitely going crazy." She turned to walk from the room; maybe she just needed some distance from all the familiar toys and treasures in her room.

"..Please, Sarah.."

Okay, that time she _did_ jump. Surely she didn't imagine the way his voice cracked, the desperate tone those two little words. She turned, more slowly this time, and glanced around her room. The shelves full of books hadn't shifted. The collections and toys were all in their places. The vanity held a few pictures and knick knacks...

There.

Sarah's eyes were suddenly huge. Sitting in front of the mirror, as if it belonged amongst her wordly possessions, was a crystal. If she stared at it's reflection in the mirror, she thought she saw a gloved hand holding it up, almost. The moment she tried to focus on that hand, it disappeared, leaving only the reflection of the crystal itself. She stood, rooted to the ground, for several moments and stared. _My dreams. That's what he said, before._

Sarah took a deep breath, strode to the table, and picked up the crystal.


	2. Chapter 2

She was standing in a ruin. Sarah blinked and glanced around; huge chunks of stone lay strewn about, crumbled from the once strong walls of an imposing castle. Dust and grit seemed to hang in the air and made her cough. What had once been a staircase lay across the ground at her feet, leading nowhere. She stared for a moment at the carved steps and involuntarily squeezed the smooth surface of the crystal, still clutched in her hand.

"Please be careful with that one, my dear. I'm not sure if I can conjure another one."

Sarah whirled around to gawk wide-eyed at the Goblin King. "Don't sneak up on me like that! And what do you mean you can't conjure another one? Where are we?"

He offered her a tired smile, but there was only sorrow in the expression. "Don't you recognize it?"

"But...surely this can't be the labyrinth. What happened?"

"You did."

She had started peering around the crumbling walls surrounding them, but that stopped her short. She looked at him again, more closely this time. He looked haggard, like he had aged years in a single night. His clothes were smudged, dirty, and disheveled. Grit clung to his hair, which somehow managed to look more unkempt than normal. But the real difference was in his eyes. His expression was sad, but his eyes spoke volumes of frustration, defeat, and loss. She never expected to see him in such a state. "You'd better start from the beginning."

"You know how it begins. You were there. What you don't know is what happens at the end." His voice was soft, and he regarded her with a curious expression. "When you said The Words, you took any power I had over you."

Sarah shivered a little as he took a few steps closer to her. Why did she have the feeling she wouldn't like where this was going?

"I am the Lord of the Labyrinth. My power is a fearsome thing. But now I have lost all but meager threads of it. And my labyrinth is being destroyed without it."

Sarah looked down at the crystal she still held. "What exactly are you saying? Sure, I beat the labyrinth, but what does this have to do with me?"

He closed the distance between them and pondered the green depths of her eyes for a moment. "I'm saying that the labyrinth has chosen you. And without you, it will die."

She tried to leap back from his closeness but found her back pressed against a chunk of stone. He was watching her, his eyes pleading. "Sarah, you must help me."

"Woah woah time out! Help you? I don't understand any of this! It was all supposed to go back to normal after I beat you!"

"So it should all be so because you wish it? And I thought you'd grown up during your time here." He narrowed his eyes and smirked, feeling more like himself than he had since his world began to unravel.

Sarah caught the sudden glint in his eyes and resisted tossing back a childish comment. She drew in a deep breath instead. "Okay, so help me out here. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. All this weird stuff has been happening since I came home and now you tell me that I'm supposed to be some labyrinth savior or something?"

That was enough to make him chuckle. "No, you aren't 'some labyrinth savior,' my dear. But the labyrinth has been trying to call you back. You simply did not understand. You have gained the power I have lost. And without that power, my labyrinth will continue to crumble."

Sarah didn't know what to say, so she just stared into the crystal in her hand. It had felt so easy to pick it up when she'd found it in her room, heard his ghostly voice, but now it felt.. different. "Why do I feel like I've been struck by lightning?"

"Because, as I said, you now possess my powers. There is magic coursing through your veins, though you don't yet know how to control it." As if to punctuate his statement, they heard a distant rumbling as the labyrinth continued to fall into ruin. "I can teach you, but there is the rather pressing matter of staving off the utter destruction of my world. It has slowed since you arrived, but without your help..."

She regarded him for a moment. They had been enemies so recently, and now he was asking her to save his kingdom. From a destruction she caused. "I'll do it."


	3. Chapter 3

He had led her carefully through the rubble to the doors of the castle, which were remarkably still standing. The walls here had also crumbled, though they retained more structure than the ruined bits of the city she had first arrived in. Still, Sarah was nervous that opening the colossal doors would bring them crashing down. "So.. what now?"

Jareth turned and held out a hand to her. "Now you must learn to harness the magic inside of you. Bring me the crystal." She hesitated a moment before stepping beside him and placing the orb in his palm. The proximity of their hands left her fingers tingling, and she drew her hand back quickly. He offered her a brief smile. "The castle is the center of the labyrinth, and the magic is stronger here, which is why this is where we will start."

"Okay, so... what now?"

Jareth began rolling the crystal smoothly across his fingers as he explained. "The crystal is a conduit, nothing more. If you can grasp the magic and shape it, then you can use this as... think of it as a door. You only need the proper key." The crystal came to rest on his peaked fingers, and he held it out to her. She looked at his outstretched hand but did not reach for it. "Sarah, trust me."

 _Do I trust him?_ _I did agree to help..._ She steeled herself, though for what she didn't know, and took the crystal from him. There was that electric sensation again, but different. _Was it the crystal, or was it him?_ The crystal seemed warmer in her hand than it had a moment ago. "It feels different now."

"I may be weakened at the moment, but the magic of the labyrinth is still my magic. I am doing what I can to help you open the door. Magic is very simple, at it's core. It is connected to you, your thoughts, desires, and emotions."

She couldn't help but feel a shiver run down her back at the thought of anything knowing those things about her, and she did her best to hide it. He only raised an eyebrow in response. "So, what, I'm supposed to toss the crystal at a broken wall? What's that got to do with my emotions?"

"As I said, the crystal is a conduit. The magic is inside you, and you must shape it to your will."

 _Gee, thanks, for clarifying._ "Okay, here goes." She hefted the ball in her hand, getting a feel for the weight of it in her hand, considered the delapidated wall to one side of the castle doors, and tossed it as hard as she could against the most solid part of the wall. It struck and shattered in a glittery mist which settled on the crumbled edges and the stones which littered the base of the wall. Before her eyes the fallen stones rose up and returned to their original places, knitting back together until she couldn't make out where the damage had been done. If she had not seen the destruction moments before, she would not have known it was there. "Wow. I ... can't believe that worked!"

She was staring at the magically repaired wall when she noticed Jareth watching her with a smile on his face. "I told you, the crystal is only the conduit. The magic is in you, and it will behave as you command, when you learn to harness it. This was a small step, but an important one."

She couldn't help but return his smile. "Oh? Is that because now you can open your front door again without it threatening to collapse?"

He laughed, and for the first time since she had returned, he actually looked happy for a moment. "It's a start."

 _When she took the crystal from his hand, he could feel the brief zing of magic run across his fingers. And when she took control of the magic and threw the crystal from her hand, he could feel the magic coursing through the air, doing her bidding and repairing a small part of his kingdom. The smile that arose on his face grew as he took in the awed expression on hers. He'd known she could succeed, if she believed in her own ability to do so. Her returned smile warmed his heart. She could do this. He knew it._


End file.
